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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I didn't like the calendar this year at all.

Some of it was outside of the school's control. The [b]snowcrete [/b]never-ending closure was an anomaly that frustrated me, but I can't [i]really [/i]blame on FCPS. This was the second year in a row of pretty bad snow and the county has got to develop a better plan to clear it if snow is going to be a more regular occurrence in our region. The closures for [b]special elections[/b] were also frustrating. I appreciated that they at least tried to combine them with TWs, but they just felt like one more thing on top of a bad situation.

Overall, though, there were entirely too many [b]TWs[/b]/SPs. Do teachers really need 2.5 days at the end of every quarter? On top of that, as an elementary parent, we had these completely unjustified monthly half-days. I was annoyed last year when they introduced them to help teachers learn a last-minute new curriculum, but at least there was a reason for them. This year they just...decided to keep them for fun?

I really don't mind a few extra student holidays to allow minority religion families to celebrate some of their major holidays. Part of what I like about living in Fairfax is how diverse it is and I liked that the days off prompted my kid to ask why and learn a little bit about Yom Kippur and Ramadan and Diwali, in addition to Christmas and Easter. It doesn't cover every holiday, nor is that feasible, but I like the message that it sends. And since sometimes those holidays fall on weekends or over the summer, I would leave them alone. This year happened to fall a lot mid-week and was exacerbated by the other closures, but generally-speaking, if we reigned in the TWs and monthly half-days, I think the calendar could be a lot better without having to throw holidays under the bus. [/quote]

Were there more TW/SP days though? Teachers have had 195 day contracts for years. 5 or 6 TW days fall before school starts and 1 or 2 fall after it ends. The rest fall somewhere in between.

I’d be ok with eliminating the early release days, but I think a TW should occur around the time 4th quarter grades  are due (now).

ES Teacher [/quote]

+1 I just took a personal day to write report cards so I could write comments and actually them and think about the kids and their work. I worked from 5:30am- 2:30 with a few breaks. I guess they don’t mind subs at the end of the year? [/quote]

I don’t think people realize how long it takes to complete ES Progress Reports.[/quote]

I have a ton of sympathy for teachers.  I was a high school English teacher (writing).  My mom and grandma plus one sister were elementary teachers, pre computers when everything was done manually,  including creating your own lesson plans.  It is a ton of work, especially grading well.

But... and I mean this very kindly... it often feels that teachers who post here don't realize how much every other worker, especially salaried professionals but also hourly career workers, work beyond their regular work hours, especially during busy seasons.  Every vacation, every weekend, every weekend, my salaried spouse and other salaried workers work hours in the evening and weekends, take calls and meetings on vacation, and put in hours of unpaid overtime to meet pressing deadlines or to successfully push the team or appease clients during busy seasons or big deadlines.  I put in far more overtime hours running my own business during busy season than I ever did grading papers or preparing report cards.  Your work might be more valuable to society, but the volume of work is not unusually burdensome or voluminous.

This type of work expectation is not unique to teachers nor an extraordinary unusual ask.  It is part and parcel of being a salaried profesdional worker.[/quote]

Maybe?  My spouse took a call this morning, did a little work, went to the gym took a shower, jumped on another call did some work, waited around for a while for work to be done and repackaged that work a little and sent it to the client. 6 hours of billable time today.

Me, I worked on comment from 5am-2 pm on my personal day off then worked on my end of year documentation for my SMART goal for a while.   While I understand professional jobs have lots of things to do beyond their regular hours, but it is the main focus of your job.  Your job is to appease clients and do those things.  Our main job is to teach/watch the kids and all the stuff you do to appease clients is all added on to a job where we can’t just go out to lunch when we need a break. Our main job is to be in a room for 6 hours a day with kids teaching them.  That is emotionally draining, and then on top of that we have a ton of admin tasks we can’t delegate to someone else on the team.

Why did you leave to run your own business?  It wasn’t just the personal time, it is also that teaching is HARD on top of then having to lose personal time for admin tasks.[/quote]

I'm usually a big defender of teachers, but please stop talking about comments. FCPS uses a drop down menu, it's not like other school districts that input unique comments.[/quote]

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